Investor reaches for reins on executive pay

He finds the idea of corporate extravagance intolerable, he says, after experiencing poverty firsthand during the Depression.

"I didn't even have a nickel to buy soup in school. That's how poor I was."

Most of the explosion in executive pay has come since the 1980s, said John Landry, an editor at the Harvard Business Review who wrote his dissertation on the history of executive pay.

CEOs now make more than 400 times the salary of the average worker, compared with 40 times as much in 1980, according to The Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal research group.

Morse says corporations need to be reminded of how little it takes to live comfortably -but he's realistic about what one man can do.

"I'm going to keep going," he said. "Things will change but not in the next year or two. The public doesn't respond fast enough."

Will he see CEO pay level off before his age enters three figures?

"I hope so," Morse said with a laugh. "But I'm making no prediction on that."